A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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California Judge Strikes Down Teacher Tenure/Dismissal Laws

A superior court judge has ruled in Vergara v. California that the state’s laws regulating tenure, dismissals, and last-in-first-out layoffs are all unconstitutional. The judge ruled that these laws impede administrators’ efforts to improve the quality of the teaching workforce, and that the harm falls disproportionately on poor, minority students. Naturally, the reformers who brought and supported the suit are elated.

The decision will almost certainly be appealed, but even if it is upheld it seems to me unlikely to accomplish as much as its supporters hope. I wrote about the reasons why in a piece earlier this year, concluding that:

Lawsuits can redress specific legal wrongs, like compelled segregation, but they can’t produce educational outcomes that require the coordination and relentless dedication of thousands or even millions of people, year after year.

For those who really want to maximize the quality of education offered to disadvantaged and minority students—indeed to all students—the best hope is to study the different sorts of education systems that have been tried around the world and across history, and then ensure universal access to the best among them: a free educational marketplace.

If you want people to relentlessly search for better and more efficient ways to serve families, you have to give them the freedom, the encouragement, and the incentives to do so. Liberate, respect, and reward education entrepreneurs, and they will strive to the utmost to better educate your children. Don’t, and they won’t.